Air Marshal Sreedhara Panicker Radha Krishnan Nair (born 7 July 1958),

PVSM Param Vishisht Seva Medal (PVSM) (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, IAST: , ) is a Military awards and decorations, military award of India. It is the highest peacetime medal of the Indian Armed Forces, and is awarded for "dist ...

AVSM Ati Vishisht Seva Medal (AVSM, ) is a military award of India given to recognize "distinguished service of an exceptional order" to all ranks of the armed forces. The award is a peacetime equivalent of Uttam Yuddh Seva Medal, which is a Wartime ...

, VM,

Mention in Dispatches To be mentioned in dispatches (or despatches) describes a member of the armed forces whose name appears in an official report written by a superior officer and sent to the high command, in which their gallant or meritorious action in the face of t ...

is a retired officer of

Indian Air Force The Indian Air Force (IAF) (ISO 15919, ISO: ) is the air force, air arm of the Indian Armed Forces. Its primary mission is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct aerial warfare during armed conflicts. It was officially established on 8 Octob ...

who was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C), Training Command of the

from 1 September 2015 to 31 July 2018. He succeeded Air Marshal Ramesh Rai.

Early life and education

Nair was born on 7 July 1958 at

Thiruvananthapuram Thiruvananthapuram ( ), also known as Trivandrum, is the Capital city, capital city of the Indian state of Kerala. As of 2011, the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation had a population of 957,730 over an area of 214.86 sq. km, making it the ...

, Kerala. He is an alumnus of Loyola School, Thiruvananthapuram and National Defence Academy, Pune.

Career

Nair was commissioned into the transport stream of the Indian Air Force in June 1980. He has clocked over 7200 hours of flying and has experience on many different types of aircraft's including

Otter Otters are carnivorous mammals in the subfamily Lutrinae. The 13 extant otter species are all semiaquatic, aquatic, or marine. Lutrinae is a branch of the Mustelidae family, which includes weasels, badgers, mink, and wolverines, among ...

Avro Avro (an initialism of the founder's name) was a British aircraft manufacturer. Its designs include the Avro 504, used as a trainer in the First World War, the Avro Lancaster, one of the pre-eminent bombers of the Second World War, and the d ...

, An-32,

Dornier Dornier may refer to: * Claudius Dornier (1884–1969), German aircraft designer and builder ** Dornier Flugzeugwerke, German aircraft manufacturer founded in 1914 by Claudius Dornier * Dornier Consulting, international consulting and project manag ...

and

IL-76 The Ilyushin Il-76 (; NATO reporting name: Candid) is a multi-purpose, fixed-wing, four-engine turbofan strategic airlifter designed by the Soviet Union's Ilyushin design bureau as a commercial freighter in 1967, to replace the Antonov An-12. ...

. He held several key operational and administrative appointments at various stages of his service including Chief Operations Officer of a Transport Base; Commanding Officer of a strategic Air lift Squadron; Director Operations (Transport) at Air Headquarters; Air Officer Commanding of AFS Chandigarh; Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Personnel Airmen and Civilians); Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Transport & Helicopter) and Senior Air Staff Officer of Training Command. He has also been extensively involved in many military operations including

Operation Pawan Operation Pawan ( ''Kãryvãhi Pavan'', lit. "Operation Wind") was the code name assigned to the operation by the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to take control of Jaffna from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the T ...

Operation Cactus Operation or Operations may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''Operation'' (game), a battery-operated board game that challenges dexterity * Operation (music), a term used in musical set theory * ''Operations'' (magazine), Multi-Man ...

, Operations Parakram and

Operation Safed Sagar Operation Safed Sagar (, lit. "Operation White Ocean") was the code name assigned to the Indian Air Force's role in acting jointly with the Indian Army during the 1999 Kargil war that was aimed at flushing out regular and irregular troops o ...

. As the Flight Commander, he was directly involved in initiating night operations to Leh and Thoise on the IL-76 aircraft. He has led multiple airborne exercises with foreign countries includin
Exercise Blue Crane
in South Africa in 1999

an

He captained a flight to th

making it th
first Indian aircraft to fly over the true North pole.
He played a pivotal role i
operationalising Daulet Beg Oldi
the highest air strip in the world, for An-32 and C-130 aircraft. He was involved in numerous disaster relief operations during the

2001 Gujarat earthquake The 2001 Gujarat earthquake, also known as the Bhuj earthquake, occurred on 26 January at . The epicentre was about 9 km south-southwest of the village of Chobari in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch district in Gujarat, India. The earthquake had ...

, Super cyclone in Orissa,

2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami On 26 December 2004, at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+07:00, UTC+7), a major earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2–9.3 struck with an epicenter, epicentre off the west coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The Submarine earthquake, undersea ...

, Mumbai Floods, Cyclone Katrina, China Earthquake and was the Air Force co-ordinator for Operation Rahat. He is a qualified Flying Instructor, has been an Air Force Examiner and is the Commodore Commandant of 44 Squadron (Mighty Jets). He joined the Armed Forces Tribunal as an Administrative Member at the Kochi Bench on 15 September 2020.

Awards and medals

During 38 years of his career, Nair has been awarded several medals: AOC-in-C Commendation, Chief of the Air Staff Commendation, GOC-in-C Commendation, Mention-in-Despatch (1999), the

Vayu Sena Medal The Vayu Sena Medal () is a military decoration, usually awarded in peacetime for a job well done in the Indian Air Force. However, it has been granted during times of conflict for acts of gallantry in the face of enemy, though not in the same n ...

(2005), the

Ati Vishisht Seva Medal Ati Vishisht Seva Medal (AVSM, ) is a military award of India given to recognize "distinguished service of an exceptional order" to all ranks of the armed forces. The award is a peacetime equivalent of Uttam Yuddh Seva Medal, which is a Wartime D ...

(January 2010) and the

Param Vishisht Seva Medal Param Vishisht Seva Medal (PVSM) (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, IAST: , ) is a Military awards and decorations, military award of India. It is the highest peacetime medal of the Indian Armed Forces, and is awarded for "dist ...

(January 2017).

Personal life

He is married to Geethanjali Nair and their daughter Karthika Nair (Director & Head of Operations, Praesedia Biotherapeutics Pvt. Ltd.) is married to Manu Balachandran, Deputy Editor, Forbes India.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nair, S R K Living people Indian Air Force air marshals Recipients of the Param Vishisht Seva Medal Recipients of the Ati Vishisht Seva Medal 1958 births Recipients of the Vayu Sena Medal Deputy chiefs of Air Staff (India)